While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (in other words, if you want to buy it online and download it, you’ll do so through Origin) that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic.

Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals.

However, you won’t need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin. Once the game is on your hard disk, you’ll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that.

To answer another question - boxed versions of the game will include the client on DVD(s).

People still seem to argue about things that are irrelevant in the big picture, where you have less options to buy a game.

However, there was interesting sign where Alice 2 I thought going to be exclusive but its now on steam too, I hope that may give a chance to some EA games being exclusive to origin for short time and then be available on other places such as steam, I hope this trend continue and when sales occur on steam vs origin I will post here spamming every time to make sure people see it.

Ruffiana wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 21:13:6 months after launch, when the game fails to meet expectations and Origin flops over like the still-born, half-baked service that it will undoubtedly be...you will see this game avaiable on Steam and any other digital distirbution service that EA can find to try and drum up numbers.

Until then, you can order a box copy off Amazon, have it shipped to your door, and avoid the mess alltogether.

You may be right..but I doubt it.

This game will get a huge amount of pre-orders, when Bioware someday finally commits to an actual launch date.You will also see big sales numbers in the beginning, and possibly record sales.

I may be up in the night here but SWTOR is really the only big budget subscription based MMO left standing that will go in direct competition with WoW, It's Star Wars(yawn..)and it has a massive budget behind it from a known dev house.

The real question here is what will the retention rate look like a month, and further 6 months after the big launch.

Theres GW2 coming but it's sub free so there will be a shit ton of people(including me)checking that out anyway, whether i make it my new home or not, we'll see.

Plus, most of those missions are soloable. So I think I'll probably get it at some point in the future (six months after release or so) when the early bugs have been fixed, and just play through all the story content.

I'm curious as to how much story content there actually is. Bioware claims that they have a unique campaign for each class but how long are those campaigns and how well-crafted are the missions? If it turns out that each campaign is only 10 hours and comprised of generic MMO grind quests, I'll pass. If it turns out that TOR has awesome 20-hour campaigns for each class, I'll probably give the game a try for a month or two once the initial game price goes down.

Early video stated that there's more content in a given class'es campaign than any single BioWare game.

6 months after launch, when the game fails to meet expectations and Origin flops over like the still-born, half-baked service that it will undoubtedly be...you will see this game avaiable on Steam and any other digital distirbution service that EA can find to try and drum up numbers.

Until then, you can order a box copy off Amazon, have it shipped to your door, and avoid the mess alltogether.

Cutter wrote on Jun 16, 2011, 22:10:Way to limit yourself on an already underwhelming response so far. Are they trying to get this thing to fail on purpose?

If you're game, we can probably come up with a way for you to let go of your hate.

Perhaps we can arrange for someone to buy you some beer or at the very least give you a much needed hug. Sound good?

Hey, i know shills/fanboys for Bioware/EA don't like dissenting opinion, but unfortunately for you we're still entitled to them. You'd probably be much happier in a place like the middle-east or China where you don't have to worry about that sort of thing.

Plus, most of those missions are soloable. So I think I'll probably get it at some point in the future (six months after release or so) when the early bugs have been fixed, and just play through all the story content.

I'm curious as to how much story content there actually is. Bioware claims that they have a unique campaign for each class but how long are those campaigns and how well-crafted are the missions? If it turns out that each campaign is only 10 hours and comprised of generic MMO grind quests, I'll pass. If it turns out that TOR has awesome 20-hour campaigns for each class, I'll probably give the game a try for a month or two once the initial game price goes down.

Verno wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 12:59:Putting that aside because its obviously going in circles yet again, what is the general interest level around here for TOR? I find myself fairly apathetic to it but I think that's more rooted in malaise with MMOs in general.

To be honest, I'm pretty interested. I've never played WoW so the whole "It's just WoW in space!" thing doesn't really affect me, and most previews do hammer home that the class-specific "story" missions are varied and fun, and you've got 8 classes worth of content there.

Plus, most of those missions are soloable. So I think I'll probably get it at some point in the future (six months after release or so) when the early bugs have been fixed, and just play through all the story content.

As an actual MMO, it holds no interest for me, and I doubt that I'd ever be caught dead in a "flashpoint."

Creston

That's good news cause I'd be the one booting your ass from the group for not knowing your role or how to play in a team environment you SCRUB!

Dev wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 14:08:You just tell steam NOT to auto login to friends when you run it. Its in steam settings. You are invisible then unless/until you log into the friends part of steam. I think sometimes you need to sign into friends to play multiplayer, but all single player stuff has worked fine for me doing it this way.Doing it this way means you don't have 5 seconds where you ARE online while you are trying to tell it to set friends offline. Instead it starts up in the friends not logged in mode.

This is all different from the full steam offline mode. This isn't offline steam mode, this is just having friends set so its not logged into friends part.

Yes. I have Steam set to not sign in to friends and I have the in-game Steam overlay turned off as well. Doing this makes Steam virtually invisible expcept the for initial login when you launch a Steam game. When I play online games like Left 4 Dead I turn all that stuff back on.

Games for Windows has the same thing, you can turn of all notifications. The issue with GFWL is that you sign-in in-game and it can sometimes take a while, which means with notifications off you're kind of sitting there wondering what is happening.

Origin and Impulse don't even need to be running when you launch a game.

what makes you think they gonna magically start to offer as many sales and deals on origin knowing well that those games are not offered anywhere else? IN fact they can even charge more than before.

How about a basic understanding of economics? You're acting like they are going to have a monopoly product, but that's not the relevant bit, even if it were true. EA may be the only one to digitally distribute their products (and barring SWTOR, we are only speculating that that will happen), but their products are in competition with all the other games out there. If EA were to say "Ha ha, you have to buy our games at Origin, so we are going to charge $100 for them all!", people would simply stop buying EA games, and buy the games of companies that were charging less.

In other words, EA is in competition for finite entertainment dollars. If people don't spend them on EA products, they will spend them on other products. So it is in EA's best interests to entice people to spend them on EA products. That is almost certain to include sales and discounts, because those are good ways to entice people to spend money.

Bhruic wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 10:24:Can you disable it? I didn't see any option to do so when I checked the settings. Not sure that going offline really satisfies my criteria of "if I'm online" . But yeah, I'd like to see the invisible mode. Same with an "appear offline" mode, and an "appear offline to specific user" mode. If they are going to implement a full IM client within Steam, you'd think they'd steal some of the better ideas from the various IM clients already in existence.

You just tell steam NOT to auto login to friends when you run it. Its in steam settings. You are invisible then unless/until you log into the friends part of steam. I think sometimes you need to sign into friends to play multiplayer, but all single player stuff has worked fine for me doing it this way.Doing it this way means you don't have 5 seconds where you ARE online while you are trying to tell it to set friends offline. Instead it starts up in the friends not logged in mode.

This is all different from the full steam offline mode. This isn't offline steam mode, this is just having friends set so its not logged into friends part.

Verno wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 12:59:Putting that aside because its obviously going in circles yet again, what is the general interest level around here for TOR? I find myself fairly apathetic to it but I think that's more rooted in malaise with MMOs in general.

To be honest, I'm pretty interested. I've never played WoW so the whole "It's just WoW in space!" thing doesn't really affect me, and most previews do hammer home that the class-specific "story" missions are varied and fun, and you've got 8 classes worth of content there.

Plus, most of those missions are soloable. So I think I'll probably get it at some point in the future (six months after release or so) when the early bugs have been fixed, and just play through all the story content.

As an actual MMO, it holds no interest for me, and I doubt that I'd ever be caught dead in a "flashpoint."

nin wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 11:56:As much as it pains me to defend EA (and boy does it ever!), I did a little research on this, and was pleased they have a specific area setup for game deauthorizations: http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/

And I'm pretty sure, if what I read on the steam boards is correct, that at least some, if not all, or the download insurance crap has been removed with the "Origin" rebranding. Though I don't have a screenshot in front of me, someone posted one of a game being purchased, with no sign of the "download insurance".

That's fair enough, and I stand corrected. Thanks for clearing that up.

Putting that aside because its obviously going in circles yet again, what is the general interest level around here for TOR? I find myself fairly apathetic to it but I think that's more rooted in malaise with MMOs in general.

Just thinking about all the games I bought or almost bought on the insane steam sales for past year, in many cases I never seen such deals elsewhere or as often.

That's kinda the point, isn't it? How many of those games would you have bought at full price? I know personally that I've bought numerous games during Steam sales that I wouldn't have paid full price for.

With that being the case, were those sales good or bad for the company that was selling the game? Are they better off or worse off financially for having had their games on sale? Since the answer is obviously that getting some money is better than no money, why would EA avoid that "some money" by not putting their games on sale?

You can argue all day, fact is stores like steam offer insane amount of deals on frequent basis, same with other places such as impulse, gamersgate etc... when you limit all ea games to origin only those sales deals and their frequency will be limited and thus the choices for the customer. Just thinking about all the games I bought or almost bought on the insane steam sales for past year, in many cases I never seen such deals elsewhere or as often. Say what you want but now limiting all those games published by EA to origin digital source is bad for me the customer.

Bhruic wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 12:21:I don't see how you can actually support this argument. Again, this would be true if every game was increasing in price, but as long as your games are competing against other games, increasing your games in price just means people will flock to other games.

I've already addressed the idea of "games competing with other games" below, they don't exist in a vacuum where everything is valued equally both in terms of price and quality. Even if you're correct and its just somehow the big publishers by themselves that's still a worse situation than we have now.

But yeah I don't want to repeat myself for 2 pages so we'll agree to disagree at this point.

Either way, having less direct sale competition will lead to higher prices in the long term.

I don't see how you can actually support this argument. Again, this would be true if every game was increasing in price, but as long as your games are competing against other games, increasing your games in price just means people will flock to other games.

Unless you mean as a general collusion between all of the publishers - but don't we have that already? Most of the recent AAA games seem to be introduced at the $59.99 price point instead of $49.99.

Anyway, this has veered off the main point quite a bit, so if you'd like to do an "agree to disagree", that's fine.